THREE FISH HEADS

​GRANT HOWINGTON

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  I’ve nothing to say about my grandpa that isn’t really about you. Like when I say “I wish he had been there for you,” I mostly mean, “I wish you hadn’t been so angry when I was younger.” In first grade, I once worked myself up so hard I puked in my room. You raised your voice. I flinched. You punched a hole in my door and swore at me. This made me cry even harder.
    It’s hard to blame you. I can’t imagine grandpa giving you “the talk.” By this, I mean I think you slept with the first woman who smiled at you, and I was born on March 16th, 1996, to you and Mom. You were twenty-two and she was older than you. I am twenty-three now and could not raise a child.
    I’ve nothing really to say about my grandpa that isn’t about myself. Like when I say, “I wish he had been there for you,” mostly I mean, “I wish you hadn’t been so angry when I was younger,” which is a roundabout way of saying, “I hate that I want to cry when somebody raises their voice.”
    This past summer, I went with you to my aunt’s for a barbecue. Abby goes to these things, but she was busy with Mom, so I agreed to come. It was a sunny day, and there was food and alcohol (besides, you’re good company during long car rides). We talked about what we usually talk about: Abby, Mom, her boyfriend, the anime we’ve been watching. The drive’s slow, but I didn’t mind.
    I hadn’t seen grandpa in over a year. I went with you and Abby to Battle Creek when he was first diagnosed with cancer and hadn’t seen him since. “I wish grandpa had been a better dad,” really means, “It’s hard for me to forgive.”
    The grandpa in front of me was not the grandpa I knew. Although he was tall like the grandpa I remembered, he was too thin. He needed help standing and wobbled as he walked. He smiled when he spoke and spoke with humility. He even cracked jokes.
    My grandpa was a bad dad but not a bad grandpa. Mostly, he exists as scenery in my mind, a backdrop against which to project images. I see him sitting in his chair and watching television. I smell him smoking and drinking in the garage with Mom. I remember not saying I love you because I wasn’t sure what he would say back.
    I drank too much punch and enjoyed the company of this new grandpa. He talked about when you were thirteen and told him a joke with a blonde woman bringing a car door to the desert. He laughed and told me, “Don’t watch Jeopardy with your grandma, she swears over it!”
     My grandma sat down half an hour later, and her sister asked her about Jeopardy. She said, “Fucking Jeopardy!”
     After a while, you had to help my grandpa walk to the car, then we went to your car and drove away. Our conversation wandered back to our hobbies, stopping and hanging in the air a bit while my face flushed from all the punch.
    “It was weird to see my dad like that.”
    I agreed with you, and then nobody spoke for a while.
    You are not the only one who has watched his father mature. There were things I saw that I did not understand; The holes in the drywall that        Tyler and I laughed at as kids, the poster that hid the hole in my door, the bitter tears I watched you cry between the washer and dryer. The patience and restraint you exhibit nowadays do not come from the father I was afraid of.
     Perhaps these days I go easy on you, but as a child, I think I hated you. Remember when Mom’s “nice friend” from work made us Halloween decorations, shop-rag ghosts? You threw them away. I thought I hated you then, but I didn’t understand.
     Remember when we stayed up too late watching Monday Night Raw and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, remember me begging to stay up for just one more show? You’d always relent, and then you would tuck me into bed and check to make sure my window was locked. I think I loved you then.
    When Anna and I broke up, we had been together for three years and eight months. She lived with me for two of those years. In the last six months we were together, I usually stalled going to bed with her. She worked early, so I would sit in our room and smoke. This is all to say: I understand why you let me stay up for one more show.
    Of course, you and Mom divorced. It took a year for you to leave our home and move into a trailer nearby. Eventually Mom’s “nice friend” from work moved in. His name was Craig. He was an alcoholic, and as I grew to resent mom, my opinion of you improved. Maybe this was a natural progression from the physical separation that was put between us, or maybe I just got old enough to put things together.
     I came to see you as a victim and absolved you of guilt. How empowering, to be rendered useless and guilt-free by your twelve year old son. It would take a decade for me to see and accept your culpability.
     We pulled into Mom’s driveway. You had to go see your girlfriend, couldn’t come inside to talk. I looked at you, then I looked away and said “I love you.” I wanted to hug you, but instead, I said I was happy I decided to come. I got out of the car and did not look back until I made it to the side door.
    When I say, “I wish my grandpa was a better dad,” I think, I’m sorry life’s been so hard. You’re not a bad person, as in, you don’t deserve to be burdened by anything. And by that, I mean, “I wish I could make it easier for you.” Your name is Christian, and you were captain of your high school football team. My grandpa’s name is Lowell, and he never went to a single one of your games. He drove trucks to support his four children. When you were nineteen, you two got into a shoving match which ended when my grandma’s decorative plate broke, which you replaced a week later even though you were not the one who broke it.
     My name is Grant and you have gone to every field trip, comic convention, guitar lesson, birthday party, movie, and graduation I have ever asked you to attend. There is a silver string strung through us like three fish heads on piano wire. When I say, “I wish he had been a better dad,” mostly I mean, “I wish we knew how to say I love you.”